Seriously, if you’re not into explicit, icky pregnancy-related stuff, feel free to skip directly to Miss Alli’s brilliant recap of the Best Nine“Amazing Race” Episodes Ever, which is the funniest thing I’ve read online in a while. (Four words: "My ox is broken!")

Or, in honor of the holiday, go pick up Joe Hill’s Twentieth Century Ghosts, which is the flat-out creepiest thing I’ve read in a while. I am still haunted by the cardboard-box maze in “Voluntary Committal” (and I’m not the only one…read raves here and here).

I will even give you a nice long page break so you don’t have to accidentally encounter any pregnancy-related ickiness, because believe me, it’s the last thing I want to inflict on you, my readers.

Okay? We’re all good?

Good.

Yesterday we went to the doctor’s for the 34-week let’s-see-what-we-got ultrasound. The doctor pressed the sensor against my belly and peered at the screen. “Ouch,” he said. “Wow. That can’t feel good.”

Long story short: the baby is breech. Transverse breech, to be specific, which means it's sort of lying sideways, with the head snug up underneath my diaphragm and stomach (which explains why I can’t eat more than three bites of anything without suffering the instantaneous pangs of the Heartburn of Doom, and why I took my last deep breath in August). Meanwhile, the baby’s feet are doing hourly performances of Riverdance atop my nether regions.

I wasn’t too surprised. Having been through this before, I know that pregnancy equals discomfort…but I also knew that lately I’ve been uncomfortable in a completely different way than I was uncomfortable with Baby the First. That time, it was nagging aches and pains. This time, it’s more like searing, stabbing, oh-God-make-it-stop pain.

My doctor left us with some parting advice: do NOT go on the Internet.

“You Google ‘breech baby’ and you’re going to get all kinds of craziness,” he said sternly.

So of course, I go home and Google ‘breech baby’ and get all kinds of craziness, plus many helpful DIY techniques for how you can get a breech baby to flip him or herself head down. Turns out, if I were so inclined, I could spend fifteen minutes of every two waking hours squatting on my bed, knees to chest, with a flashlight pressed against my lower belly, saying encouraging things to the baby such as “Come to the light! Come into the light! But not like in Poltergeist!”

Good times.

Or I could go swimming, which is supposed to help, and sounds a lot more viable, and less time-consuming, than the flashlight trick.

In book news, GOOD IN BED made the Associated Press’s roundup of best book endings. The book’s described as “chick lit with a heart and some brains.” And you know what I always say: some brains are better than none brains.